Belize Blog – Belizeadventure.com

The short answer is yes, you should take a scuba course from a local dive shop if you can before you get to Belize for your island vacation. If you don’t have a local dive shop or enough time before your trip, you can always do it when you get there as long as you have enough time on the island. Scuba courses have three components, but two can be done at home.

The first part is the written part of the course. There are lectures covering the material in your textbook, which these days means watching DVDs with an instructor to answer your questions. After watching the DVDs, you have written tests you need to pass.

The second part is a series of shallow water skills you have to complete. In water no more than 6 feet deep they teach you how to deal with possible accidents, like your mask coming off, or using up all of your oxygen in your tank. After learning the steps of recovery, your instructor then has you simulate the accident (take your mask off underwater, for example), and then demonstrate that you know what to do in such an emergency. All of this is done in shallow water.

The final part is the good part: diving at Glover’s Reef! Each different level of certification has a different number of required dives to complete that level. On course dives you do a few skills at depth (40 feet for beginning divers) and then you just go for a dive like any certified diver would, except you are diving with a dive instructor rather than a dive master.

The reason I recommend you take your course before you arrive if you can, is to avoid using your valuable vacation time on a private island taking tests and watching DVDs. But you don’t have to complete the 3rd part of the certification at home. You can instead get what’s called a ‘referral’ course where you complete the first 2 parts at home, bringing proof that you completed them with you, and finish the fun part on the island. Every Belize scuba shop offers this option. So for example, you can take the Open Water Diver course which takes 4 days and 4 dives to finish. Or you can take the Open Water Referral course which takes 2 days and 4 dives to finish.

You can find a complete list of our Belize dive courses on our website.

Many people inquire about combining our all-inclusive island package with a short stay at Caye Caulker on their own. This is easy, but you wouldn’t go from one directly to the other. In a nutshell, all roads in Belize lead to Belize City.

No one would travel from Glovers Reef to Caye Caulker, or visa versa unless you chartered a boat, and that would be expensive (my best guess: about $1200-1500 US). You would return to Belize City from one to catch transport to the other.

We have a private boat that goes between Belize City and our island 2x a week, and the price for this transfer is included in all of our island packages. Caye Caulker is well out of the way, and we would run out of gas if we wanted to ‘swing by’ Caye Caulker on the way. (Not to mention that all of the other guests not going to Caye Caulker would not appreciate the extra hour in the boat).

Because Caye Caulker is a big island with lots of hotels and other rental properties, they have regularly scheduled flights (http://www.tropicair.com/ or http://www.mayaregional.com/) and water taxis (http://www.gocayecaulker.com/members/ccwta.html) that are affordable (flight: $40 one way, water taxi: $10 one way).

So, for example if you wanted to do our 5-day Adventure Island at Glover’s Reef trip first, then go to Caye Caulker, here is how that would look in an itinerary:

Fri: fly into Belize City, take a taxi to the Biltmore and check in. Your guide will then meet you at the Biltmore at 5:30 pm. Dinner and overnight included in package.
Sat: After (included) breakfast, walk to our dock 1 block from hotel (luggage is driven). Get on boat no later than 8:30 am, probably more like 8 am. Out to island by about 11-11:30 am. Tour of island, lunch. After lunch sport activities start.
Sun: Island activities all day.
Mon: Island activities all day.
Tue: Island activities all day.
Wed: Island activities all morning. Lunch on island. Boat leaves after lunch and gets back to Belize City by about 3 pm. Take a cab to either the municipal airport or the water taxi terminal to catch next transport to Caye Caulker. It’s a 20 minute flight and 45 minute boat ride. (Last water taxi AND last flight from Belize City leaves at 5:30 pm.) Dinner and overnight at Caye Caulker. (One note: after the long boat ride from the island, you would probably rather fly.) Or you can overnight at the Biltmore again (not included in half week package) and take the water taxi or flight first thing in the morning.

One final thing, you might be thinking of Ambergris Caye instead of Caye Caulker. These two islands are near each other and both have flights and water taxis, so everything here pertains to Ambergris Caye as well.

Every week we update our website where we list fares to Belize. Cheap flights are very hard to come by these days, and in the past few months they have usually gone up or stayed the same rather than drop. Today we were very pleased to see that in at least one market they are dropping. Last week Charlotte, NC (CLT) to Belize City, Belize (BZE) was $779 round trip, today it is $649. Air fare to Belize also dropped from 2 other cities: Atlanta and Montreal, but not by nearly as much. Moral of the story: if you fly from Charlotte, jump on it!

One month ago tomorrow I turned 55. Somehow, the double number made a bigger impression on my psyche than even the big five-o did. That, combined with the fact that in the past year I’ve developed a few chronic aches and pains, got me thinking that maybe this was it – life was beginning to leave me behind, whatever new and exciting experiences I’d had in my life were now becoming things of the past.

Then I stumbled across this article in the Poughkeepsie Journal about this guy, James Curran, who discovered the sport of scuba diving as he turned 60 and in the three years since has made 167 dives. The article featured a picture of him diving off the coast of Belize.

James Curran dives off the coast of Belize, Central America on a recent trip. / Courtesy photo

That brought back memories of my last dive. It was eight years ago off Long Caye in Belize during a week’s stay at Adventure Island. We took a five minute boat ride from the rustic, island resort, out to a site they call “The Wall,” one of the top-rated Belize dive sites. We flipped over the side of the boat and suddenly, 40 feet below loomed one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen — an underwater cliff dropping 2600 feet into the depths. We cruised along the rim of the cliff exploring the extravagant corral formations and gazing out into the abyss as huge sea turtles swam into view. It was the dive of a lifetime.

Recalling that adventure reminds me that despite my age, new experiences still await if only I remain open to them. It’s never too late.

So you want to go to Belize? When someone signs up for a Belize adventure we always remind them that it’s a great idea to purchase travel insurance. Once we confirm a reservation, we don’t cancel; if our guide gets sick we have others who can take their place. But if something happens to you, you might not be able to go.

Many people say: “I’ve been traveling for years and I’ve never needed it!” That may indeed be true, but we have seen MANY unforeseen things happen to our guests, and the ones who did take our advice were so thankful that they did.

Our guests are active people, and by far the most common reason for trip cancellation is a skiing accident the week before they are scheduled to go to Belize. You can’t paddle a kayak or hold on to a windsurfer with a broken arm!

Other things that have happened to our guests on more than one occasion: illness of one of the members of the group traveling together, death or illness of a family member back home, and changes at work that make travel a bad idea at the time they planned to go.

In deciding whether or not to buy travel insurance, consider the investment you are making in your vacation and whether or not you could afford the loss if you did have to cancel.

Every travel company has a cancellation policy where they retain some or all of your payments if you cancel. If you expect them to do otherwise, you are basically asking them to insure your non-attendance at no cost to you. It is your outfitter’s responsibility to run the trip they promised you, no matter what emergencies may arise for them immediately before the trip. It is your responsibility to pay for the trip on which you reserved a space, and a travel insurance policy helps make your disappointment in missing your trip not be a financial burden as well.

The reason travel companies are unable to refund your payments is that as a trip approaches there is little chance they could fill your spaces, and they may have turned away others who wanted space on that date. By the time it is 60 days or less from your departure date, companies have spent considerable time and energy preparing for your arrival: confirming guides and drivers, making non-refundable hotel reservations, and planning countless other logistics. With a travel insurance policy you can also insure your ticket to belize in addition to your all-inclusive package.

We recommend Travelex travel insurance, a company we have been recommending to our guests for over 10 years. We have received no complaints about their service beyond a somewhat expected “it’s a hassle to collect” from just a few who purchased a policy from them. It is an extra step, but if something goes wrong and you can’t make the trip you signed up for, you will be VERY glad you purchased a policy. When someone makes a claim, a form is forwarded to us, which we fill out with the amount of money you have spent, date of trip, whether you attended at all or arrived late, etc. So we do help with your claim and provide all necessary documentation to the company.

Travelex has 3 policies to choose from, but we recommend you choose one of the two least expensive options: Travel Basic or Travel Select. At this writing a policy covering $2500 worth of travel expenses for a person in the 35-50 age bracket would cost $85 per person base rate for the Travel Basic plan and $132 for the Travel Select plan. Both policies include a “Ten Day Free Look” which means you can change your mind after purchasing for up to 10 days as long as you have not departed on your trip yet or filed a claim. Some of the differences between Travel Basic and Travel Select are:

Travel Select includes everything Travel Basic does. Coverage limits are higher with Travel Select for trip cancellation, trip interruption, trip delay, baggage lost or delayed, emergency accident and sickness medical expense, and emergency medical evacuation. Travel Select also includes:
-One child under 21 is free for each adult purchasing a policy.
-If you purchase the plan within 21 days from the day you confirm your Belize tour, all pre-existing medical conditions are eligible for coverage.
-Mandatory evacuation coverage

We recommend you imagine just what could feasibly happen to you, and then look those instances up in each policy to see if they are covered. Do you have a sick or aging parent that could worsen and interrupt your travel plans? Do you have a chronic illness currently in remission that could flare up unexpectedly? Is the company you work for rumored to be soon undergoing major reorganization? Compare the two policies for any eventualities that could happen to you.

Every week we update our Belize flights page on our website. We use on-line tools to find the best fares from 24 US and Canadian cities, so each week we are scrutinizing these rates. Everyone wants a cheap flight-Belize. But flights to Belize have gone up lately, and I have been trying to figure out why.

Actually I am surprised that they have stayed so cheap for so many years. For many, many years the cost was about $480 round trip from many cities in the US. But it seems those days are over. Now the best prices seem consistently in the $680 range. Gas has obviously gone up in recent years, which must be a great deal of the reason. And there are not many flights to Belize at all, only 1/day from 5 airlines. But there are still some things you can do to find the best rate possible.

The best on-line tool I have found is at kayak.com. Go to this website, put in your airport and dates and click on “My dates are flexible.” Then choose “3 days before and after” and click “Search”. Close the Priceline.com window that pops up… what you want is the chart. This chart will show you lowest and highest prices for arriving and departing any of 7 days, 3 days before and 3 days after your preferred arrival date, and 3 days before and 3 days after your preferred departure date. Some weeks you will find it is best to arrive on Wednesday or Thursday instead of Friday, or leave Monday instead of Sunday. This wonderful tool doesn’t force you to type in every single option to find out when the rates are lowest.

You should also try typing in different departure cities if you live in a place where you have multiple options. For example, from Moab we can fly from Grand Junction, CO; Montrose, CO; Salt Lake City, UT; Denver, CO; or Albuquerque, NM.

If you do choose to arrive early or stay late there is plenty to do! Basically, you could spend weeks and weeks in Belize and not come close to seeing it all. Check out our Things to Do in Belize page for our recommendations.

I get this question a lot. Often someone calls who is planning to fly to Belize, and then transfer somewhere else like Dangriga, Hopkins, or Placencia. In most cases I advise them to fly.

First of all, you can only rent and return cars in Belize City, so if you rent it at the beginning you will be committed to hang on to it for the rest of your trip (assuming you are not planning to spend any more time in the city than you have to).

It can be expensive to rent a car in Belize. The cheapest car I have found on-line comes out to about $60/day with tax and insurance, and don’t forget that gas costs about $6.00 US per gallon!

Second, most flights to Belize land around 2 – 4 pm, and you have to get through customs and immigration, which takes a minimum of 30 minutes…. which means you will be picking up your rental car late in the day and driving in an unfamiliar country at night. Not recommended.

Also, most guests want to take tours in Belize almost every day, and transportation is always included. So you are paying at least $60/day for your car to sit there.

Finally, it can be dangerous to drive in Belize. Some Belizean drivers drive recklessly, the roads are often in poor shape, and you are not familiar with local driving customs. For example, most of Belize City is one-way roads, but they are not always marked as such.

There are a few instances where it makes good sense to drive. A party of 4+ might really save money by driving. If you plan to spend a lot of time touring around on the roads, obviously you would need a vehicle. But think hard about it before you decide to drive. A flight down to Dangriga (about 3 hours from Belize City by road) takes 20 minutes at a cost of $125 US/person round trip.

One final point, if you fly instead of drive, you get a scenic flight in the bargain!

In the departure area of the Belize international airport (BZE) there is an impressive display of photos of many Belize islands taken from a plane. These images are of very high quality. Years ago we contacted the photographer, Jimmie C. Smith, to purchase the use of several of his photos for our Belize brochure.

Several times in the past years he has gone down to Belize with professional camera gear and hired a private plane to fly him around. His aerial photos of Belize islands are the best we have seen.

You can visit his website to purchase images of Long Caye and other islands at Glover’s Reef. One cool thing about one of his Long Caye photos is that it was taken before Hurricane Mitch. The little island off of ours that used to be there is in the image. You won’t be able to see this view now, that island was destroyed at the same time that we lost about 75 feet of our shore. You can see before and after photos on a blog post we published back in June: http://belizeadventure.com/2011/06/memories-of-hurricane-mitch/

When I flew to Belize a few weeks ago, I entered the immigration area just like always. But something was different… I was surprised to hear some really great Belizean music coming from the baggage claim area. While waiting in line to get my passport stamped, I couldn’t see exactly where the music was coming from because there were so many people waiting for their luggage. This sounded like live music! What was going on??? After finishing the immigration process I made my way over to the luggage claim area and there was this really great 5-piece band set up right by the revolving luggage belt. They finished the rasta song, and switched to country! What the heck? I asked the woman at the Belize Tourist Board office what the story was with the band. She said they had hired this band, Li’l Beats, to play every Wednesday and Friday all day long throughout the rest of the year. I was super psyched since most of our guests arrive on Friday. Fantastic!

Belize doesn’t produce many handmade souvenirs. They don’t have a tradition of handicrafts, except for drums from Dangriga and Hopkins. In fact, most tourist gift shops in Belize will be filled with products from Guatemala.

So what do you take home to your friends and family? I have the answer! Belize does have an interesting selection of excellent food and drinks. There are many options in the local supermarkets. For guests on our trips, it’s easy to go to Brodies supermarket on the Northern Highway, just 2 blocks from the Biltmore. We get back off the island in plenty of time for you to walk down there on your last afternoon before we pick you up for dinner. It’s easy and the items are very reasonably priced.

Belize’s #1 producer of excellent hot sauce and jams is Marie Sharp. She makes carrot hot sauce, grapefruit hot sauce, and my favorite: cactus hot sauce! You can get mild, medium, hot and fiery hot, and you can buy large bottles or tiny plastic bottles that only cost 90 cents (US) each. Your friends will LOVE them. I know mine do. The small plastic bottles are also perfect for a camping trip. Don’t leave Belize without taking home a supply. I find that 2 large bottles and 10 of the travel size lasts me for one year.

But she also makes jam. You can find mango, banana, mixed tropical fruit, orange, pineapple, guava, papaya, and red or green habanero jelly (my favorite). We serve a lot of all of these on our island with johnny cakes and biscuits. These are fabulous jams! Take some of them home too!

You can also buy coconut oil, coffee (except their coffee is only OK), dried tropical fruits, plantain chips, pumpkin seeds, and cashews, all grown and processed in Belize.

Another very interesting item is recado. This is a spice paste sold in balls or bars, also known as red achiote paste. You can’t make Belize Stew Chicken without it. You can find the local recipe elsewhere on this blog.

But don’t forget the beer! Belikin Beer, the beer of Belize, is very, very good. It comes in 2 varieties: beer and stout. You can tell which is which by the color of the caps (beer: green cap, stout: blue cap). You’ll get a lot of opportunity to try this on the island, as we include beer at no additional charge for our Belize vacation packages.

And rum! Belize produces a lot of rum. One Barrel is our staff favorite, but there are many other fantastic rums and rum mixes, as well as coconut rum which is so good you can drink it straight.

And something that might surprise you, the Bowen & Bowen soda factory makes all of their own soda pop. We serve a lot of this on the island too. Their ginger ale is MUCH better than what we can get in the US, and they are all made with cane syrup grown right in Belize; no high fructose corn syrup. I don’t drink soda in the US, but I do in Belize. It’s all quite good. They don’t produce any diet drinks but they have a great soda water that you can mix with squash.

Squash? Did you hear that right? I mean the drink concentrate. It’s a British product (remember Belize used to be British Honduras). It’s amazing stuff. It needs no refrigeration. You can get lime, orange, tropical fruit punch, grapefruit (my fave), pineapple, and mango.

There are other products they produce in Belize that you probably won’t be taking home with you: excellent yogurt, cheese, bacon, beans, rice, sugar, and their own version of Wonderbread.

And if you really want to go local, take home some Roses toilet paper. Produced right in Belize!

These images were taken at the Brodies on the Northern Highway. All prices, when visible, are in Belize dollars (2 Belize dollars = 1 US dollar, so divide by 2).

(You can click each image to view the full picture.)